The Best Of All Worlds

I admit that I'm one of those guys who don't dig the D20 rules for the 3rd Edition of D&D. See, I was weaned on D&D during the last days of 1st Edition. I'm used to everyone going up a level with varying amounts of experience points. I'm used to -7 AC being a good thing. I'm used to arguing over how you pronounce THAC0. I'm used to D&D having it's own, unique set of rules. I'm used to playing the game my way.

I admit that I'm one of those guys who don't dig the D20 rules for the 3rd Edition of D&D. See, I was weaned on D&D during the last days of 1st Edition. I'm used to everyone going up a level with varying amounts of experience points. I'm used to -7 AC being a good thing. I'm used to arguing over how you pronounce THAC0. I'm used to D&D having it's own, unique set of rules. I'm used to playing the game my way.

I had problems with 2nd Edition when it came out, too. When I was fifteen, I had this really cool idea for a devil-hunting assassin character. But, alas, under 2nd Edition, the politically incorrect assassin class had been removed. In fact, a lot of cool things went away.

1st Edition has always been my preferred rule set for D&D. It's just one of those things I "grew up" with. Those were the rules I first learned and those are the rules I prefer to work with, even now. Sure, some of them are silly and have been replaced by better concepts over the years. I found 2nd Edition to be too restrictive. And I find 3rd Edition's flexibility too extreme and convoluted.

When 2nd Edition came out, all my friends started making the grand conversion. Devils became baatezu and much more scarce than before. Acrobats and barbarians went the way of the dodo. The Forgotten Realms became "the" place for characters to adventure. Initially, I trudged along with the gang and accepted the way things were. In time, I grew to accept the changes. In fact, some of them I took a keen liking to. I was never terribly impressed with the Forgotten Realms, but I did become intrigued by the worlds of Spelljammer and Dark Sun. Orcus wasn't popping up in modules anymore (he was dead, after all), but then modules were becoming more story-oriented and less focused on killing and looting. Slowly, I was learning that change isn't always a bad thing. Yet, a fondness for the old ways lingered.

Time wore on and it looked like 2nd Edition was here to stay. My ideas for a devil-hunting assassin would have to wait for another era. Or would they?

I took some time off from D&D to try out other games. In the mid 90's, I revisited the world of D&D with some old-skool mentality. I was older, richer (which meant I had a meager income instead of allowances), and I was determined to do things my way. It was time to play some down-to-earth D&D. I had found and purchased copies of the old handbooks and designed my own new world. I wasn't dealing with any 2nd Edition restrictions anymore. Nor was I dealing with 1st Edition restrictions.

In fact, I wasn't dealing with any restrictions.

While experimenting with other games, I learned every rule set has its fair share of ups and downs. D&D, regardless of the edition, is no exception. By this point in my life, I'd learned to take the good and ditch the bad. Devil-hunting assassins were free to roam in my new D&D world. In fact, they could roam on board Spelljamming ships. Or, they could hunt hiding devils on the world of Dark Sun. It didn't really matter. All obnoxious restrictions were outcast. My D&D world became a blend of the best parts of 1st and 2nd Editions.

It may not sound like it, but this was a big step for me. I had spent a few years playing with rules lawyers and other sorts who got bogged down in details. The notion of blending two things into one was unheard of in my old gaming circles. If the good book said that barbarians didn't exist, my old gaming buddies blindly nodded their heads. The whole point, as they told me, was to keep the two things separated.

I didn't agree and, ultimately, I decided that the whole point to playing D&D (or any game) is to have fun. If the rules keep a game from being fun, then maybe those rules shouldn't exist. Why live strictly by a 2nd Edition standard that keeps certain character classes from existing when it's possible to develop an incredibly intriguing campaign that involves assassins, acrobats, and barbarians? Why limit the growth of a 1st Edition character by excluding secondary skills, expanded weapon selections, expanded bestiaries, etc.? Why not take the best of both worlds and have as much fun as possible?

When 3rd Edition came out, I was something of a pro at mix-matching different editions together. Of course, the transition between 1st and 2nd Editions was more seamless than the transition from 2nd to 3rd, but I got by. So, now that devil-hunting assassin who sails through Wildspace can do so with a handful of feats from 3rd Edition, a Hammership from 2nd Edition, and a handful of poisons from 1st Edition. The character is free to explore past the normal restrictions.

For those of you who love everything about the D20 system for 3rd Edition, carry on! For those who only like some of the new material, don't worry! It may not feel like it at first but, trust me, you can go buy the Ghostwalk book and figure out a way to make it fit with your old 2nd Edition and / or 1st Edition campaigns. Keep the rules who like, modify the ones that only partially work, and ditch the rest.

Just strive for the best of all worlds. Play the game your way. It'll be worth it.

It's not that I don't like D20, I'd just rather D&D have its own, unique feel. By the same token, I prefer the old West End rules for Star Wars.

I admit that D20 is super-flexible...but, I also think that it has a similar problem to the GURPS rule set: it's too bland. It's a good product, but it lacks spice...kind of like how a Ford Taurus is a good car, but there's too many of them on the road for it to be special.

Of course, I think the only way to make any RPG special is to add your own elements into it. And for me & D&D, that means blending it all together.

Someone around here once wrote that the rules should be transparent: that they should function seamlessly in the background, and that they should not interfere with the actual play of the game. Under this ideal, it would be the setting, and not the system itself, that gives distinctiveness to the gaming experience.

In my experience, the reality of the situation is that the system intrudes all too frequently, as meta-gamed thinking produces rules arguments and attempts to find ways to exploit the system.

In striving toward the ideal of the seamless gaming experience, I have found two approaches to be effective:

1) Use a gaming system that is extremely simple. A gentle learning curve promotes game immersion, and rule simplicity minimizes systemic exploitation.

The trade-off is that realism is sacrificed; players clamoring for called shots and the like will grumble.

2) Use a gaming system that is detailed but consistent and logical. The level of detail will satisfy players with outlandish tastes, and the logical design will ensure that modifications to the system will be relatively simple.

The trade-off here is that the steepness of the learning curve is inversely proportionate to the level of systemic detail. As players and GM struggle to master the rules, they will have to wade through ponderous discussions of how the rules should be interpreted and applied.

I have only met one example of #1, though I believe there are others out there. It was Call of Cthulhu, 5th edition. Never have I seen a ruleset so elegant, and never have I introduced non-roleplayers to a roleplaying game in a shorter amount of time, or with greater success.

Of #2, I can think of two systems whose internal logic is simple enough to support expansions, but whose level of systemic detail is considerable enough to maintain the interest of hard-core gamers. These are the d20 and GURPS systems. Each, in its way, is easily modified: nearly anyone can design a new, well-balanced prestige class for d20, and GURPS allows the creation and use of characters in any setting imaginable.

The trouble with AD&D, in my opinion, is that it is convoluted and esoteric. No gaming group can hope to master it so fully that it will seem to fade into the background, and even if one did, the resulting harmony would last only as long as the group remained intact.

Githyanki, your effort to cobble together a system incorporating the best aspects of the three editions of D&D is admirable, but it seems unlikely to me to be the sort of thing that would be easily communicated to other gamers. I can see it working for a small, tightly-knit gaming group whose members know and trust you, but I can't see it being understood or accepted by a broad gaming audience. Your quest is esoteric by its very nature: it seems likely to attract only those who are fond of delving deeply into obscure and complex systems of rules.

It's possible that I'm completely wrong: after all, I haven't seen your house rules "master document" (if you use one), or heard you outline the workings of your system in enough detail to attempt it myself. In a vacuum, however, it sounds apt to be complex and difficult to convey.

Olly said: "GURPS is a little to unweildly for my liking. I could never get my head round it."

Somewhere, a village is missing its Olly. =)

Seriously, better minds than mine have been intimidated by GURPS' bewildering array of modifiers and special circumstances. It is my belief, however, that GURPS is no less unwieldy than d20 is, and that it is decidedly less so as players begin to master it. The cetnral logic of GURPS rules is very simple; the devil, as they say, is in the details.

I've never found GURPS a particularly difficult system, and neither has anyone I've played with (including some 14-year-olds). As has been pointed out, the basic mechanics are very simple; pretty much everything is either 3D6, or some other number of D6 (and that's pretty much just for weapon damage, magical healing effects, and other similar things that 3D6 wouldn't necessarily work for). Character generation can sometimes be a lengthy process, but it's usually pretty straightforward.

Yes, there are a lot of details, but the important ones are quickly memorized as they come up again and again, and the obscure ones.. well, that's why you keep the books around for reference, and the books are usually VERY clearly organized.

Well, I admit that the guys I play with are the same guys that I've been gaming with since 1991. We get a "new guy" now and then, but for the most part it's the same old crowd. Thus, my D&D blend didn't throw them off.

I'll also confess that I have a small fortune in old D&D products and it's easier for me to "dumb down" 3rd Edition material than it is to upgrade old material. I can buy a 3rd edition module and alter the first edition stats easier than I can alter a 1st edition module into 3rd. Maybe I'm the lone wolf in this regard...who knows?

Also...the games I'm involved with tend to be less action oriented and the rules, to me, seem mostly geared towards action-type events, regardless of the edition. The guys I play with are more likely to strike up a conversation with a beholder and ask him questions rather than attack it off the bat. That's the round-about way of saying that I usually don't have to worry so much about the beholder's AC or what the 7th eyestalk does.

I suppose that blending the rules is one of those things that is so second-handed in nature that it just seems, well, normal.

I agree that it's not for everybody nor am I suggesting that "my" way is the more "mature" way. I'm just here to say that it's possible and potentially enjoyable.

I had a friend who ran a weird mix of 1st and 2nd Ed and, at the time, I really enjoyed the flexability inherint in the best of both systems. Now that d20 is out I must say thay I do enjoy it much more than that mix that we all ended up using.

Cocytus has it right on the money, and said what I was kinda gonna say. There's also the factor of GM workload; for example, in WoD, things tend to be so freeform it dumps a lot of weight on the storyteller's shoulders to say "No, you can't do that" when the players want to have the troll chuck the redcap into battle for extra damage. (Note: actual story told to me by a then-member of my D&D group.) Having a support system of standard and playtested rules helps the DM concentrate on story rather than get bogged down in can-I/can't-I.

On a side track, I find that Star Wars d20 is impressive in its ability to encourage noncombat within the d20 system. Because of the way they use vitality and wounds (I LOVE that) combat is somewhat more deadly for PCs (since a crit can possibly kill you even at full health), but also less deadly for NPCs (since they can get knocked out by a bad fort save upon taking little real damage). The lack of magical healing makes wounds a real problem rather than a reason to run to the First-Aid Kit With Legs (as DM, that behavior always pissed me off...)

I tend to feel blending systems is more work than it's worth, particularly since at every point someone has to ask "Are we doing this the 2nd ed way, or 3rd?" I'm not saying D&D 3.5 is perfect by any stretch, but I'm quite happy not having saves vs. breath weapons, petrification, magic, chicken bites, exploding mattresses, stop lights, cream pies... :)

Blending the rules has been an organic process for me -- I guess my article does suggest that I came out of the cage with my own kooky system.

When you're playing with mostly the same guys for several years, you don't want to chuck the old character sheet. You get attachted to that -7 AC, or whatever it is. At least that's the case with me and my fellows.

Along comes something new...but not 100% compatible. You can ignore the new and keep the old, you can ditch the old and embrace the new...or you can meet somewhere in the middle.

And you don't have to do it all at once.

There were a lot of neat spells that I wanted some evil NPC's to use from the Book of Vile Darkness (Crushing Fist of Spite comes to mind). Well, it's not like I went out and bought the book and threw a bunch of new spells at my PC's the next week. I introduced them slowly & gradually. This also gave me time to make adjustments (if necessary) to make these spells work with the "house rules."

It's cool that not everyone agrees. And I agree that my "house rules" might scare away new gamers and frustrate old gamers.

Ever since 3rd edition came out, I've been kind of torn. I like a lot of the new source material, but I don't want to scrap years (decades, almost) of work just to adopt a new set of rules...especially since I'm a rules-lite DM. But, I didn't want to ignore the new products either. So, I blended the systems together.

The fact that I did this isn't a novel idea. I'm just saying that it can be done. I toyed with the idea of going full-on 3rd edition, but decided not to. I wrote the article for those who are in my shoes to let them know that you can find a middle, common ground. It's not for everybody, but neither is Mountain Dew.

I might should have added that you have to have loyal players to make it work. Doing something like this with a group that you only play with once a month or so probably wouldn't work. The players have to have a degree of maturity -- I've played with folks who wouldn't buy into this mentality...but, then, I wouldn't want to play straight 3rd Edition with those guys anymore anyway.

Like I said, it's not for everybody. I'm just here to let you know that it's possible.

1991? Now I feel old! I have to agree with Rogue, in that a custom "house-rules" game system is very comfortable when you have the same close-knit group of players. Our group has not yet moved from our own AD&D 1st/2nd ed mix either. Sure, we'll probably try 3rd ed eventually, but I'm certain that none of us will be converting existing PCs to the new rules. There is just too much history in them at this point (some have been in play for over 15 years!) to try to "square peg, round hole" them into a different rules system.

Having said that, I will admit that our small world of AD&D hasn't really delved too deeply into the newest rendition, mainly because we've already spent a youthful fortune on 1st and 2nd editions. However, from what we have seen, read, and discussed, we feel that the newer edition does have its pros/cons (like what system doesn't?). Our early assessment is that it seems the system is based too much on "roll" playing instead of role-playing-- but that might just be us not wanting to leave the tried-n-true game we've come to know and love for so long.

We like the idea that the classes in 1st/2nd ed are separated, whereas in 3rd ed it seems that any character can be anything, provided he/she puts the right points in the right places. To each their own. We just don't prefer that.

All in all, I wanted to show Rogue that he/she had a kindred spirit in the "old-style" gaming. Too bad we don't live close enough to merge our collective groups, eh? Oh the stories they'd tell!

D20 has its merits. It brought me Mutants and Masterminds, as well as the best edition of D&D yet: Arcana Unearthed.

But to say that d20 is the best system ever...? I do hope you meant the best D&D system ever, because d20 itself has not a single innovative feature in it. Nor is it as seamless as the streamlined Storyteller system used in "Exalted" and "Adventure!".

It is tragic to see that all generic systems fail in the end. They are simply able to do a poor job of every setting there is. Want to run a Street Fighter inspired game of kung fu madness? Hmm, either a party full of monks... or just play Final Stand, Wushu, or Feng Shui. At least you get a system that's meant for your game's needs.

A seamingly wrong statement. Unless one realizes that the rules that are put down in the various references are but merely suggested guidelines. As a matter of pure fact the origional tomes involved in the D&D worlds explicitly state, "If you dont like a particular rule, throw it out." And though the rules books seem to be many and varied throughout the editions, i have never had a problem simply looking at the base stats of any character and dtermining a set of odds as to weather the character could do just about anything. From the fully armoured fighter who attempts to swim across a river 0% chance dude! To the Master thef atempting to pick the pockets of the passed out dunce 100% chance brother!

I dont allow for rules lawyering. All rules are subject to review, after the session. I do allow for some of the most interesting classes and races one could devise, special abilities though i keep to a mangeable level. For instance, The Dankari Time Shifter, Dankari are an alien race, I use basic stats for their weaponry, keeping the weapons within reason, and timeshifting can only occure 1 time a day and then only affects 1 round at first level.

As far as using the dice, almost any determination roll in the OD&D rules can be found on a d20 or a d6, the d10 is the third die but even it can be substituted with a d20, if one lets the amount of dice affect the game then the DM has failed to use the best rule in the game KISS.

Keep It Simple Stupid!

Lastly, and not entirely remembering exactly why I started writing this, Any system can be easily streamlined and inclusive as long as the GM wants to allow it. The system is irrelevant in this. The gamers in the system are the final law.

A seamingly wrong statement. Unless one realizes that the rules that are put down in the various references are but merely suggested guidelines. As a matter of pure fact the origional tomes involved in the D&D worlds explicitly state, "If you dont like a particular rule, throw it out." And though the rules books seem to be many and varied throughout the editions, i have never had a problem simply looking at the base stats of any character and dtermining a set of odds as to weather the character could do just about anything. From the fully armoured fighter who attempts to swim across a river 0% chance dude! To the Master thef atempting to pick the pockets of the passed out dunce 100% chance brother!

I dont allow for rules lawyering. All rules are subject to review, after the session. I do allow for some of the most interesting classes and races one could devise, special abilities though i keep to a mangeable level. For instance, The Dankari Time Shifter, Dankari are an alien race, I use basic stats for their weaponry, keeping the weapons within reason, and timeshifting can only occure 1 time a day and then only affects 1 round at first level.

As far as using the dice, almost any determination roll in the OD&D rules can be found on a d20 or a d6, the d10 is the third die but even it can be substituted with a d20, if one lets the amount of dice affect the game then the DM has failed to use the best rule in the game KISS.

Keep It Simple Stupid!

Lastly, and not entirely remembering exactly why I started writing this, Any system can be easily streamlined and inclusive as long as the GM wants to allow it. The system is irrelevant in this. The gamers in the system are the final law.

I created a LARGE quantity of elemental magic for a RIFTS game I was playing. I wanted to be an ice mage and the RIFTS world only had 2-3 spells related to ice/cold. Two weeks after I completed them and got GM approval to use them...the game ended.

Later we started a new campaign in a different system. So I converted ALL the magic spells from Palladium rules to the new rules...sheesh, that took awhile.

Yeah, so. That movie rocks. And I have all five seasons of Buffy. And every Marilyn Manson cd. I own three different black trenchcoats as well. Any other stereotypes I can conform to while we're at it?

I have nothing against The Crow, it's a great movie. It's just every goth, neogoth, ostrogoth and visigoth I've ever met owned the special edition DVD, because they felt that they could identify with the Crow. I mean honestly! I feel like saying to 'em, "Look, He's an avenging angel, returned from the dead. He can't be killed by bullets. You on the other hand, are a twenty one year old, without a job, who still lives with him mum. You can be hurt by bullets."

I bet you've got the Kurt Cobain graphic novel as well...

(Grumbles to himself) Honestly, I saw that in the shops the other day. Pure egotism, I thought, pure egotism. Kurt Cobain was an arse who got stoned to much, and greatly overestimated his own self-importance.

Olly said:
"(Grumbles to himself) Honestly, I saw that in the shops the other day. Pure egotism, I thought, pure egotism. Kurt Cobain was an arse who got stoned to much, and greatly overestimated his own self-importance."

I cannot agree more. Kurt Cobain was a loser who wasn't very talented at all. But you left out the fact that his crack whore wife, who also has little to no talent doesn't want to give up the franchise of her dead husband. It's the only reason Hole sold a CD.

This statement comes from a person who does NOT like Nirvana OR Foo Fighters...

Kurt was just a social recluse/antisocialite who loved to write and play music but HATED to be famous. He greatly disliked the entire commercial music scene. From the parties and awards to the plastic groupies and the loser teens who wanted to be JUST like him. The music industry tried to distort his creativity into a mainstream mutation of what had MADE them famous in the first place. YES - his best music came from a blunt. YES - Courtney Love is a crack-whore.

An imagine what its like for Dave Grohl (the only talented one) to forever be in Nirvana's shadow...no matter how much better his post-Nirvana material is.

I'm a fairly new gamer, only just joined in 2002, and I find the mix of 1st,2nd, and 3rd editions much more fun than just 1 version. You get to have the best of everything. It's not really that scary, you just have to learn how to adapt to it early on. As far as it not working, most of my crowd think it's pretty good, especially since we get all the old characters. What's the point of having it without the all-important barbarians?